Nature and Politics:
Patagonias Temperate Forests under SiegeOpen-ended notes for a
framework of regional analysis

Andrés M. Dimitriu *

(Presented at the 1999 Canadian Association for Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Conference, 1999 CALACS Conference, Ottawa, Carleton University on 30 September 
October 2, 1999).

Section I

Introduction: Local Conditions, Universal Assumptions

The Venerable Buddhadãsa Bhikku, a famous Siamese Buddhist monk,
once remarked that the word development in its Pali or Sanskrit equivalent
means disorderliness or confusion, and in Buddhism
development refers either to progress or regress.

In a similar vein, Ivan Illich once told me that the Latin word
progressio, which is the root idea of development, can mean
madness also.

Sulak Sivaraksa (1)

A narrow strip in the Andean region of southern Argentina, from the
province of Neuquen to Tierra del Fuego, concentrates its only temperate forests, glaciers
and lakes: the headwaters of the Atlantic in some cases the Pacific- basin. The
region is exponentially eroding and becoming a desert (Castro, 1980), and the pressures
and strategies to "develop" the remaining fertile areas are grounded in a series
of assumptions and practices that claim universality but have not been exposed to a
contextualspatial analysis.

At the same time, the expansion of transnational capitalism in this
region, under the specific circumstances of a highly centralized and financially entangled
national state, is simultaneously shaped by industrialist assumptions, with its
predominant practices of plundering resources, (2) as by new forms of flexible
accumulation and symbolic consumption (Harvey, 1989; Zukin, 1990). To maintain profit, the
former branch has to accelerate the pace and quantities of what is extracted. But also the
"information-based," service, and cultural-symbolic side of the economy has
discovered the region. The accelerated search for new market niches is connected to the
(re)discovery of "Nature" as a staple (Wallace and Shields, 1997:387) e.g. by
eco-tourism and the re-organization of modes of consumption (McLaren, 1998, Shaw &
Williams, 1994, Zukin, 1990, Harvey, 1989) and renovated arguments to carry out centrally
managed conservation and bio-diversity programs (Guha, 1997, Sachs, 1995; Shiva, 1993).
Indeed, 12 of the 23 National Parks or Argentina are in Patagonia, and 11 new areas have
been designated in the last two years in this region. Both expressions (the extractive and
the symbolic), although interconnected in various dimensions, have found two major limits.
On one hand, it becomes more difficult to conceal the devastation of extensive areas of
ancient forests (logging, transportation infrastructure, intensive uses by tourism), soil
erosion (accelerated by inappropriate agricultural practices), decreasing water quality
(mining, inadequate sewage and industrial or urban waste treatment in general,
pesticides), floods and droughts, and associated consequences and conflicts. On the other,
the rise of a new leisure system and gentrified tourist areas (3), exclusive real estate,
and related service-based activities, generate new sites of local contradiction because of
its uneven character, social displacements, changes of local production and consumption
habits, necessity of competition and exclusions. Both forms of capital accumulation and
flow, while coexisting with other less competitive local modes of production, may operate
in the same areas, arranging, however, convenient boundaries for their activities
depending on the background and power of the opponent. A mining or an oil company, for
instance, would most probably have some troubles to share a place with international golf,
adventure trekking-, rafting- or horseback riding operators. Such disputes will eventually
be settled through negotiations done in the common language of business. But, as another
and more prevalent case in point shows, the use of indigenous communities common
land by the MEGA project (a merger of Dow Chemical, the Brazilian Petrobras, and the
recently privatized Argentine YPF REPSOL- oil companies) was decided, after a short
period of some basic PR and "conflict resolution" tactics. A federal court ruled
in accordance with recent investment-protection laws, and the Kaxipayiñ community must
allow the construction of a huge gas plant in their territory. The conflict is snowballing
because the community is peacefully resisting. Several human rights organizations,
churches, and labor unions have joined the protest (4).

At a first glance, any description of transnational corporations
activities in Patagonia does not reveal consistent differences from what seems to be a
homogeneous and global expansion of late capitalism. However, as Harvey argues, what
appears to be a disorganized stage is nothing else but a new form of accumulation in which

The ongoing process of privatization in Argentina has also been
accompanied by an intensified involvement of the same transnational economic actors that
operate in the region (oil, logging, pulp, mining, commercial fishing, infrastructure
building) in the dynamic and converging field of telecommunication and information-based
activities (i.e. Internet services, banking services, credit cards, flights and hotel
reservations) and cultural production and distribution (cable companies associated with
printed media and radio stations). Transnational conglomerates of the resource extraction,
agribusiness and service sectors are also increasingly occupying directly or through
sponsorships- a particularly active role in the commodification of leisure activities and
tourism and in selected educational activities, sports, performing arts, training and
research agendas (Shaw and Williams, 1994). New forms of creative services can be found in
a variety of activities (Zukin, 1990) that locally range from "typical" and
juxtaposed "Swiss alpine" [sic] architecture in ski & mountain resorts
(which may be combined with other fast-food or hotel chain architecture, but centrally
designed and assembled constructions and styles) to advertisement and publishing through
mergers, joint undertakings, vertical or horizontal integration. As Harvey explains, it is
only through growth that profits can be assured, regardless of social, geopolitical, or
ecological consequences, and this implies growth in real values (Harvey, 1989:180),
consummated in a scenario of competition, forced innovation (or "creative
destruction") and accelerated turnover time of capital (Harvey, 1989:299).

The above mentioned oligopolistic amalgamations take place in a complex
interplay of fast growing and hyperactive economies of scale and scope with local
cultural, political and economical conditions. This process should not be separated into
disconnected parts because contradictions of transnational actors with local
configurations, as Mosco argues, may indicate the existence of a diversity of identities
and local resistance, "but they can also mark a more tightly organized capitalism
which uses its control over technologies and expertise to give it the flexibility to
tolerate, resist, absorb, commodify, or ignore these resistances" (Mosco,1997:33).

One contention to the ways of presenting the so called
information-based economy, as in many aspects correctly characterized by David Harvey
(1989), Manuel Castells (1989) and others, is that the universal extension of flexible
accumulation and speed of capital flow has by no means decreased the pace and rates of the
extractive (plunder) activities but has on the contrary contributed to the price
devaluation of this kind of extracted goods (as it has done with labour),
mystifying or concealing more than ever the social and environmental consequences. In a
deeper analysis, it has intensified the disappearance or corralling of contending world
views and knowledge systems(Galtung, 1996; Howard, 1994; Shiva, 1993), causing a
loss of the historical perspective that would allow to enable and integrate these other
systems. One way to execute such exclusions is to accelerate turn-over time of capital
while reducing more organic face to-face time horizons of embedded and contextual
decision-making (Harvey, 1989:229, Mires, 1990:41).

But time and space compression, however powerful as a mode of
supremacy, does not necessarily mean a irreversibledevaluation (through
objectification of nature and labour) nor the disappearance of local autonomies.
"Shaped by their commercial and geographical context, [the use of] these technologies
facilitate the ongoing production of centres and margins, that is to say, spatially
differentiated hierarchies of politico-economic power" (Berland, 1996:2). And
margins, as places of conflict, constitute at the same time an axial element to understand
the centres. In his early critique to knowledge monopolies, the Canadian scholar H. Innis
defined oral culture as "a mode of resistance from the margins to the
expansionist monopolization of knowledge at the centre, with its now dangerous lack of
self-reflexivity, cultural flexibility, or dialogue" (Berland, 1996:10).

2. Towards a framework for regional analysis on forests

The connections and contradictions between forest or watershed-
policies, resource extraction and service based activities such as tourism are many, and
need to be addressed bearing in mind theoretical shortcomings as well as the genealogy of
current institutional discourses. The following list briefly outlines some of the missing
conditions.

Argentina, as any other country, is "ranked" and compared to others by
international agencies by a standard procedures that rely on mathematical abstractions
such as GNP, per capita income, growth percentages, willingness to adopt
neo-liberal prescriptions, investment security, among other indicators. Such criteria do
not reflect regional (intra-national) endo-colonialism, injustice, corruption, general
failures in social policies, environmental devastation, or intergenerational consequences.

National states and institutions have been either under-theorized in the neo-classical
literature (Brohman, 1995) or theoretically generalized, e.g. in the dependentista
and in the world system approach (Hettne, 1984, Schuurman, 1995). Regional issues need to
be specifically approached within larger structures..

A tendency to theoretical centralism can also be traced in the Argentine social
sciences, routinely framing regional situations from a "national" hierarchy of
priorities. With a few exceptions, the study of diverse local circumstances is
subordinated to centrally administered research funds. A deeper view of the articulation
of national conditions; the interplay of economic forces, institutions and civil society;
and more specifically the ways in which the highly centralized Argentine state and
institutions extend and have extended in the past- its influence and reproduction
over the region, is needed.

The "local" has gained a renewed international attention, but for different
reasons: as a "firm centered" communitarianism; as a response to situations of
anomie and retirement of the state; as a rejection of modern imperatives and technologies
and search for alternative life styles or for combined forms in intra-regional development
models, such as workers cooperatives in Porto Alegre, Brazil and Mondragon in the Basque
region of Spain, among others (Amin, 1996; Arocena, 1996; Ekins, 1986). A positive
inventory of the search for autonomy and alternative practices will require focused
attention to this particular context and its history.

Within the last decade, the provincial states and municipalities have been
"hollowed out" (5) in many senses, but are kept however with selective powers to
ensure juridical security for investments (or international loans) guarantee access to
common resources, and privatizing health, education, irrigation systems, banking, and
other previously publicly owned- basic services while minimizing their role to
populist interventions, pushed to "create" mostly alienated , unskilled and
inadequately paid jobs, and to increase police forces.

The universal, unavoidable and "natural" character of a depoliticized economy
is widely assumed. Accordingly, it appears that there are few options left. Crisisis
perceived either as a failure to integrate into the globalist project or as a
"natural hazard" that should be managed by experts. Consequently, stock market
speculative games and breakdowns are labeled following the fashion of meteorologists
baptizing hurricanes, i.e., the Tequila, Samba, Vodka, or Rice "effect"). The
sacred cows of modernity, growth and progress, are assumed to be inescapable
and driven by "imperatives" of the market system, which in itself is perceived
as synonymous with society and nature. These assumption, consequently, cannot be
challenged unless it is by the aggregation of new fuites en avant, that is:
increasing velocity and quantity of extractive activities and international tourism (and
the expansion of infrastructure to go faster from A to B, including reduction of
regulatory constraints and trade barriers), expanding risk production schemes (e.g.,
contract farming, commercial forestry), promoting training instead of education,
encouraging labour flexibilization and pragmatic policies directed towards string-attached
"lending," and, in general, concentrating all public and private efforts and
resources in favor of an export-oriented development.

Nature, like society, often appears as a compartmentalized aggregation of abstract
categories, depending on or reflecting- particular institutional arrangements of the
state (dividing the universe into ministries and regulatory bodies); discipline centered
views such as "scientific" forestry, separating forestry from agriculture, as
explained by Guha, 1993, 1997, and V. Shiva, 1993; simplified corporate schemes and
neo-liberal prescriptions, or a combination of all three factors. Geographical regions are
not understood as integrated social-cultural-environmental totalities in which, for
instance, ancient forests play a crucial role in a number of material and non-material
dimensions such as a sustainable source of income and self-reliance, control or reduction
of risks and soil erosion, self sufficiency, identity, and sacred places;

Externalities, which imply physical consequences as well as subjective and cultural
dimensions (Babe, 1995, 1996; Brohman, 1995; Galtung, 1986, 1996) are not socially
assessed nor negotiated (to be compensated or simply stopped to prevent further
destruction) because there are parallel ideological and structural conditions which
disenfranchise other views, reduce spaces for political participation, or centralize
knowledge through scientific management (Howard, 1994);

Micro-macro contradictions have been routinely assumed in predominant theories and
methods. Ethnographies and small-scale analysis of local conditions and context have left
out larger configurations and power relations. Conversely, structural analysis has
overlooked human agency and how social movements struggle for autonomy and meaning.

Section II

________________________________________________________________

1. State, Margins, and Social Spaces

The physiognomy of a government can best be judged in its
colonies, for there its characteristic traits usually appear larger and more distinct.
When I wish to judge of the spirit and faults of the administration of Louis XIV, I must
go to Canada. Its deformity is there seen as through a microscope

Alexis de Tocqueville, in Dorland (1996)

To address local situations it is central to follow the history of a
particular state formation and how its political, cultural and ideological circumstances
shaped its institutions, social life and internal power relations. A first observation
that can be made is that there are no neutral generalizations about the state. If the
Western model of nation-state (since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648) as the political
organization that exercises sovereign power over a specified geographical territory, is
providing the terms of reference to which the "political formations of other
societies are required to conform or approximate" (Lowe & Lloyd, 1997:8), then an
interlocking of the state and its policies with neo-liberal prescriptions and agendas for
development, as followed or promoted by industrialized countries, is an inevitable
consequence. The western State model has fallen to its lowest historical point regarding
its role as the vehicle for representative democracy, reducing Enlightenment ideals of
emancipation and citizens involvement to consumer choice and lately, closer to
pragmatism and exclusionary practices, to narrowed "stakeholder" and
"win-or-lose" choices. At the same time, the state has reached its highest peak
in representing "economic" (read corporate) interests in its
"allocative" or "productive" role and articulation in defense of
investors rights and freedoms through technocratic and sometimes secretive arrangements
such as the postponed Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) and the World Trade
Organization (WTO), among others.

The roles of Third World states, however, are on many levels
contradictory in the context of transnational capitalism.

On one hand [the state] is typically characterized [by neo-classical
theory] as almost completely omnipotent in its ability to set policy according to its
macroeconomic objectives. On the other, it is also described as virtually totally impotent
and incapable of acting in an economically rational and efficient manner (unless, of
course, it effectively follows neo-classical policy prescriptions)" (Brohman,
1995a:301).

By way of theoretical constructs, national states are confined, in
accordance with economist reductionism, to neo-liberal positions and competitive
performance in the global arena, in a ranking order that promotes warship by all known and
permanently innovative means instead of cooperation, self-reliance, social justice,
sustainability, reciprocity and accountability.

Internally, the national state still represents a paradoxical space for
political contention, resistance, and action that has been prematurely discarded in favour
of new global configurations such as the IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO. The USA,
described by Brzezinski in 1971 as "the first global society" and the principal
"disseminator" of the "technetronic revolution" (in Mattelart,
1994:135), is using these institutions to disseminate its governing believes about liberal
pluralism (for instance in the entrepreneurial press system) and particular cultural
policies (the melting pot) to other contexts. The market system in industrial capitalism,
through its creation of scarcity and responses to ill-defined needs and demands, (6) is
accordingly characterized as the best place to locate satisfiers and choices by
individuals seeking the most effective ways to maximize utilities (the Homo economicus),
replacing political life and cultural expressions by information exchanges and
connectivity. "Communication" is thus defined, in neo-classical economic theory,
as the optimal place for this kind of informational exchanges (Babe, 1995).

More organic perceptions of time and humanitys non-instrumental
connection with all forms of life, or the search and creation of alternatives, and
preservation of non-market values, rules, or culturally and historically shaped notions of
collective ends and purposes are outside the range of such descriptions. The
progressive idea of one indisputable development model admits
"pluralistic" means and even local creativity to reach this ideal, but leaves
the existential question of purposes (or even the revision of motion and change) out of
the debate. As described by Brohman, "By precluding attention to elements of human
behaviour that do not fit its narrow definition of economic rationality, neoclassical
theory leaves itself no mechanism for understanding and explaining the often messy
empirical world that so defies its models" (Brohman, 1995a:298). For instance, and
despite many appealing connotations, the terms "participation" and "popular
participation" have distracted close attention from the nature of the power relations
involved , i.e. participation in the world market by "isolated and subsistence
peasants," participation of people as objects of national programs of development,
participation of the public in pre-selected options, participation in populist policies,
and so forth (Nelson and Wright, 1997:2).

Colonization is not restricted to what has been described as the Third
World nor is it a category that, if applied to states, wipes out the internal diversity
of situations. In this sense, the concept of "margins" retains a valid place in
respect to both national and intra-national dimensions. Harold Innis and scholars
following his tradition of political economy and culture have made relevant contributions
to the appreciation of genealogies of centres and margins. Dorland, for instance,
recognizes that for Innis, Canadas institutional development "has its roots in
an unbroken continuum, reaching back to the early modern emergence of the European,
absolutist state" and has been marked simultaneously by "relative
stability" and by "continuous repression" (Dorland, 1997:3). Despite
differences between Canada and Argentina, Inniss tradition of ideas and frames of
examination open a number of theoretical windows for the study of the symbolic order and
related time- and space-reducing technologies in staple-based economies. "Placing
technology and space at the centre of his research enabled Innis (and critical scholars
influenced by him) to establish a reflexively marginal approach to the strategic
imbrications of technology, geography, culture, knowledge and power which have shaped
Western Imperialism, and which have done so in particular ways in the twentieth
century" (Berland, 1996:2).

In the analysis of the intersections of peripheral states with new
arrangements of transnational capitalism, the representations of the national state
suffered several mutilations. A minimal expression of state is desirable from the
neo-liberal perspective (strong enough, nevertheless, to "correct" what is
collected under the umbrella-concept of "market imperfections"), downgrading it
to its now prevalent role of guarantor for transnational investments. Two concepts are
applicable to understand the lineage of present institutional and economic practices in
this respect. One is the idea of a state as a force beyond any disagreement, a state that
inherited an autonomous rationality or Raison dEtat to resolve the
"highest priorities" or "vital interests" of a nation-city, swallowing
every internal cultural variety or conflict into its homogenizing and overarching
jurisdiction. Unity, in the nation-state, means subordinated unity from the margins to the
centre. The second is the perception of development as a "transitional" vehicle
or "detour on the way to cosmopolitanism or socialism", a trajectory that would
conduct nations and societies to the "proper" and modernized end of
history (Lloyd, 1996:175). However, an ultimate rejection of the state as a commonly
organized place is difficult to sustain, despite its contradictions. The consulted
bibliography, on the contrary, suggest the perpetuity of unstable conditions and
open-ended definitions of state in its inter relations with social movements (or political
society) and economic forces.

Another distinctive factor of intra-regional development in Latin
America is the varied reproduction and actualization of colonial practices, a
characteristic that has been studied by R. Guha in India (1993, 1997), describing the
continuation of colonial institutions in contemporary wildlife conservation programs. The
relevance of his argument relies not only in the observation of institutional and
professional behaviour (the biologists, the local government officials, the WWF, IUCN,
Sierra Club and other international agencies and NGOs) and the extension of new
protected areas ("protected" from their previously established inhabitants), but
also in the definitions of peoples role within those plans. In the new
techno-centric colonialism, mainstream assumptions are defining local people in rural
areas as an environmental "burden" and "part of the problem" and
rarely as subjects able to respond with solutions. Instead they promote displacement and
scientifically defended exclusions, while absorbing "valuable indigenous
knowledge"...if it has commercial potential.

2. Between structure, agency and normativity

In this paper, I argue in favor of an integration of political economy
with critical development theory. Both approaches, however, will only lead to alternative
and autonomy if they transcend pure economistic and goal oriented frames that have been,
as it has been vastly argued, the guiding force behind different development strategies.

While most authors dealing with critical development theory would agree
that the micro level is inscribed within rules set by structure and "external"
factors such as state policies and the international market system, the importance
attributed to the subjects role varies from what has correctly been characterized as
"post-modern optimism" concerning identity formation and cultural consumption at
the micro level (Garnham, 1997:56) to more developed articulations between the individual
actor and macro and meso levels, as proposed by Long (1996). The subjects
recognition of their own forces and creation of knowledge creation/dissemination,
according to Long, is a process of multiple interconnected elements:

actor strategies and capacities for drawing upon existing knowledge
repertoires and absorbing new information, validation processes whereby newly introduced
information and its sources are judged acceptable and useful or contested, and various
transactions involving the exchange of specific material and symbolic benefits. Implicit
in all this is the fact that the generation and utilization of knowledge is not merely a
matter of instrumentalities, technical efficiencies, or hermeneutics (i.e. the mediation
of the understanding of others through the theoretical interpretation of our own), but
involves aspects of control, authority and power that are embedded in social
relationships" (Long, 1996:146).

Booth, in a position similar to that of Mosco (1996) and Garnham
(1996), recognizing Longs position, proposes to be more cautious about the nature
and scope of participatory research or case studies, demanding reconciliation of insights
about local settings with the understanding of larger structures, without which these
insightwill lack realism. "It is legitimate to ask how we are to ensure that
the findings of local-action studies reflect not only local realities and
room-for-maneuver, but also the constraints upon action that may emerge at the regional or
national level (or over longer periods of time)" (Booth, 1996:60).

Political economy, on the other hand, and despite its preferences for
macro-analysis, has never been indifferent to the historical dimensions and complexities
of symbolic representations and how individuals and social groups perceive their world and
how this is reflected in their struggles. The question is how far political economy will
separate itself from Marxist orthodoxy and from what has been described, by Handa, 1980;
Hettne, 1984; Lutz, 1986 and Schuurman, 1996, among others, as unilinear and determinist
progressism and does not lead to a "realistic" and at the same time paralyzing
defeatism. For instance, the study of economy as a system of power (Babe, 1995:71) seeks
to understand not only a specific material context, but also the political, ideological
and cultural life which provides the text.

Ideas have an important place within political-economic accounts, but,
unlike idealist approaches, which begin with values, beliefs, or attitudes and from these
explain societys workings, the materialist approach contends that the realm of ideas
itself requires explanation. That is not to say that ideas stand outside the
material. On the contrary, the ideological and cultural are embedded in the economic base
and are an integral part of the reproduction of society" (Clement, 1997:4).

Furthermore, political economy "wants to explain the
economy and market forces so that political and social interventions can direct
economic processes," seeking most of all "to prevent the political and social
aspects of life from being marginalized by a strictly economic logic" (Clement,
ibid., p.4) (7). The bifurcation from economics and political sciences took place around
the turn of the century, with Alfred Marshall as one of the first and main representatives
of neo-classicism (Babe, 1995, 1996 a and b; Lutz, 1988; Hunt, 1979), a separation has
also contributed to the creation of a myth around the scientific and predictable nature of
economics:

One voice [economics] speaks the language of rationality, logic, and
positivism; the other [political science], a normative language that is permitted to talk
back but not with the other. One is permitted to go only so far as Max Weber (1946), who
felt that it was acceptable to be motivated by moral concerns, but that the canons of
science left no room for them in analysis" (Mosco, 1996:35).

Realistic accounts of political economy, however, may respond to the
questions of gains and losses, of production and distribution, but this

does not suffice to lead us from our present darkness to a world of
justice, peace and sustainability. Political economy as such knows nothing of altruism,
mercy, forgiveness, redemption, self-restraint, understanding, peace. While it views the
world as a struggle for power and aligns itself with the underprivileged, it is unable to
transcend that struggle in the present" (Babe, 1995:82, emph. added).

But also theories of development in the 80s have been described
as positivist: "the world is regarded as it is and not as it should be", says
Schuurman, (1996:20), stressing the relevance of two major and emerging normative
approaches: feminist, and the question of how to develop sustainability (Schuurman,
1996:20-21). Using a more elaborated framework, and in line with what was called
"Another Development" in the 70s (in Development Dialogue, Uppsala,
SIDA/Dag Hammarskjold Foundation) and the European Green movement, Hettne (1996:144)
proposes a search for alternative theory that also proposes to go beyond economism,
recovering the normative trend development theory had in the 70s which was
interrupted by the pragmatism of the 80s. Unlike traditional political economists,
however, Hettne affirms that an inventory of normative contributions and theories is
relevant because it deals not only with "development in terms of how it actually
takes place but rather how it should take place." Deriving ideas from Karl
Polanyi and following previous arguments (Friberg and Hettne, 1984), Hettne challenges the
idea of a "natural history", of unilinear progress, state intervention and
command economy in Marxist orthodoxy (the "red" model) to the "blue"
(the neo-liberal model) mainstream model because development can be -and is- affected by
political action, human will and value-laden reason ("Wertrationalitat")
that is not constrained by the boundaries of instrumental reason ("Zweckrationalitat").
Alternative development (the "green" pathway or model) includes a non
articulated multitude of perspectives that originates from the excluded and the periphery,
and "is a cry for visibility, participation, and justice" (Hettne, 1996:145).

The need to follow, understand and promote local alternatives has a
long and intermittent trajectory. On one side, Hettne (1996), Galtung (1986, 1996), Nandy
(1986) refer to the tradition of non-Western or so called "pre-modern" visions,
mainly coming from anti-colonial struggles, such as Gandhian and Buddhist philosophy,
indigenous worldviews, as well as a diversity of humanist, traditional and new social and
political movements (Esteva, 1992; Galtung, 1980, 1986, 1996; Hettne, 1984, 1996; Lutz,
1988; Morissette et al., 1992). Others, in addition, rescued early works that are within
-or close to- socialist positions, such as Rosa Luxemburgs concept of "natural
economy" (Hunt, 1979: pp. 336-343, 347-349, Mires, 1990: pp. 55-57), KropotkinsFields, Factories and Workshops(1899, in Galtung, 1980) and Serge
PodolonskysEcological Economics, a work that according to
Martinez Alier "missed the historical opportunity to inspire an ecological
Marxism" because it was cast aside by Engels in 1882 (Martinez Alier, 1992:53).

Some struggles follow local traditions and philosophies or may result
from the multiplicity of negotiations, tactics, and reactions to emerging short-term
situations and new paradoxes. As analyzed by David Harvey:

Movements of opposition to the disruptions of home, community, territory, and nation by
the restless flow of capital are legion. But then so too are movements against the tight
constraints of a purely monetary expression of value and the systematized organization of
space and time. What is more, such movements spread far beyond the realms of class
struggle in any narrowly defined sense. The rigid discipline of time schedules, of tightly
organized property rights and other forms of spatial determination, generate widespread
resistances on the part of individuals who seek to put themselves outside these hegemonic
constraints in exactly the same way that others refuse the discipline of money. And from
time to time these individual resistances can coalesce into social movements with the aim
of liberating space and time from their current materialization and constructing an
alternative kind of society in which value, time, and money are understood in new and
quite different ways. Movements of all sorts religious, mystical, social,
communitarian, humanitarian, etc- define themselves directly in terms of an antagonism to
the power of money and of rationalized conceptions of space and time over daily life
(Harvey, 1989:238)

But Harvey allows little space for optimism: the need for material
reproduction of social movements that live in opposition to the market systems, he
affirms, will permanently have to open the gate for the "dissolving power of
money" and a restored command over space and time by capital (Harvey, ibid.). Thus,
Harvey does not offer any other option to fatalism, a position that implicitly attributes
a insurmountable objectivity to the domination by forces that are thus placed beyond the
social life and command, which is limited to proximate places and "private" life
spheres.

On the other hand, the desperate search for basic rather than autonomous-
material reproduction, such as barter, local currencies, barter and exchange systems (such
as LETS, local exchange and trade system), and other expressions of the so called
"informal" economy, have found new impetuosity in the cities. Such systems of
production and exchange surpasses the formal or accounted part of economic activity in
terms of work (Ekins, 1986), are extremely unstable and may act as a pacifier of social
unrest and conform therefore a tolerated and even promoted social space. Concurrently with
a growing number of rural-based movements (e.g. the "Sem Terra" or landless
movement in Brazil) and indigenous communities, these processes are attracting renewed
interest, but also a prudent theoretical distance. Schuurman, for instance, situate these
movements as communitarianism, a perspective substantiated, he maintains, by
post-modernism with three sub-directions: 1) Neo-conservative as a reaction to
social anomie (return to history and tradition, neo-romantic philosophy of nature); 2) Progressive
communitarianism (a shortly described search for other types of "local sources of
resistance against the governing power and knowledge system", based on social
movements, and 3) Nihilism, identifying Jean Baudrillard as the most outspoken
exponent of a postmodern philosophy in which "truth and reason have been lost sight
of and simulation is the name of the game" (Schuurman, 1996:25).
"But social movements (new and old) in the Third World are not expressions of
resistance against modernity; rather, they are demands for access to it" (Schuurman,
1997:27).

Using a more differentiated frame, although focusing mostly in European
roots and contexts, Hettne recognizes other versions and historical backgrounds of what he
calls the "various manifestations of the Counterpoint" [to Mainstream models and
assumptions]. One is conservative romanticism, which may also be seen as a reaction
against industrialism in Europe of the 19th century. Hettne proposes to
understand "conservatism" beyond its common meaning as a reactionary resistance
against change, but more as "preserving what is valuable from the point of view of
certain values," such as a threatened planet. Another expression of the counterpoint
is Utopian Socialism. Hettne would discard, however, the progressive and
industrialist beliefs of Owen and Saint-Simon, redeeming instead Fourier (and the revival
of his ideas in our time) for his critique of the "dullness of industrial
production" and the importance of "passions" in his communitarian
proposals. Hettne presents Green Ideology as a synthesis of neoanarchist and
neopopulist ideas. He argues that anarchism by its historical rejection of statism
"favoured a decentralized and multifaceted social structure which made individual
self-realization possible." He calls for a differentiated populism, closer to the
tradition of the Russian narodniks, who rejected "large-scale and centralized
production as well as the idea (and ideal) of division of labor" (Hettne, 1996:148-9)
(8).

3. World(s), Globes, and "Globalization"

The question about conflict or contending interaction between different
Cosmo-visions, world-views, knowledge systems, and meanings concerning the real is central
to the understanding of current debates. In the Western world, after the publication in
1962 of T. S. Kuhns The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the classic
centrality of positivism and universal models of science has been strongly disputed,
although for different reasons within quite different theoretical contexts. On one hand,
the image of a multiplicity of rising "worlds" equating in some cases
"worlds" with new scientific revolutions and findings- emerged after Kuhns
frame became a key reference in most of the subsequent debates. The epistemological
"pendulum" that moved from "extreme logicism to extreme relativism"
(Nudler, 1990:185) has meanwhile allowed a more differentiated image of interworlds
dialogue. "World and frame conflicts are accessible to rational methods, provided
that the notion of rationality is extended beyond its narrow, Cartesian
sense" (Nudler, 1990:197).

It is interesting to note that for Innis the concept of
"bias" also referred to context and socially constructed meaning as one of the
strongest modeling forces in the work of intellectuals, rather than epistemological
strongholds. As Creighton observes:

No word appeared more frequently in his work it was part of the
title of one of his collections of essays- than the word bias. No man was ever
more acutely aware of the fact that everybody, including the most supposedly detached
economist, was a creature of his own generation and environment and deeply affected by its
values, assumptions, and beliefs. Such arguments, carried to their logical extreme, could
end only in complete relativism; they could mean only that an objective economic science
was logically impossible. This absolute conclusion Innis refused to accept. Bias was the
social scientists greatest danger, but paradoxically it also was the best hope of
salvation. Bias, he seemed to say, is an historical phenomenon that is always with us and
can be studied and analyzed just like any other historical phenomenon. And through such
study the economist could discover the cumulative force of bias, and their effect on
institutions (Creighton, 1981:21)

From another perspective, Shiva challenges the universality of western
science as a "globalised version of a very local and parochial tradition"
because it is a system of domination by which local knowledge systems are excluded,
diminished or de-qualified based on the prevalence of specific material goals (productive,
commercial, military, technological, physical) which constitute the preferred common
places to define "power" as an unavoidable destiny in the western value system
(Shiva, 1990:10). Power relations, on one hand, are measured in terms of distance (or
access) to material and more recently to commodified symbolic goods or "cultural
capital".

But power relations could also imply the study of a specific
sanctioning capacity, of how boundaries of action are defined, how the burdens of proof
are distributed (Beck, 1995), documenting "inequality in the possession of
cultural capital across persons and groups, thereby raising questions as to
how and by whom components of cultural capital get valorized, how and why some tastes and
preferences and some modes of knowledge become highly valued while others are denigrated,
and so on" (Babe, 1996).

The dominant frames of applied inspection, consequently, privilege
micro approaches by which reality is constructed through aggregated and self-contained
technical studies, in which the social, historical circumstances and meanings, as well as
the ecological consequences are excluded or reduced to input data, in which people and
nature are treated as objects, resources and commodities, "extracting", hence,
information and data, excluding the subjects from the central aspects of the research
process and final uses and control of the results. The western mode of intellectual
production also fails to be empathetic and to strive for reciprocity with other knowledge
systems.

The scientific label assigns a kind of sacredness or social
immunity to the western system. By elevating itself above society and other
knowledge systems and by simultaneously excluding other knowledge systems from the domain
of reliable and systematic knowledge, the dominant system creates its exclusive monopoly.
Paradoxically, it is the knowledge systems which are considered most open, that are, in
reality closed to scrutiny and evaluation. Modern western science is not to be evaluated,
it is merely to be accepted" (Shiva, 1993:12).

The claim of universality has also successfully been extended by
applying the cartographic notion of the "globe" as a corporate brand name and
synonym of "the" world, a single unit of analysis and provided a useful symbol
since the rise of Mercantilism for the process of transnationalization of capitalism, also
known as "globalization." The sphere, more an abstraction than a perceivable
fact, has become the target for "fantasies of large-scale planing. The image of the
Blue Planet so small and easily comprehensible- suggests that what has hitherto
provided forms of human existence may now be planned and managed as a single object"
(Sachs, 1994:174).

Planing from a distance and computer-modeled forestry, for example, are
outcomes of this centralization of solutions promoted by would-be commanding pilots of
"space ship" Earth. In 1994, the Mapuche community Aucapan rejected in
their subtle way, with silences, boycotts, "non-understandings," and so forth- a
highly subsidized project of pine plantation within their territory. Pines (Pinus
ponderosa) are a real obsession for international agencies such as the World Bank. The
argued rationale is an assumed provision of oxygen (to compensate global warming),
commercial benefits, and control of soil, among others (Dimitriu & Ciarallo,1995;
Laclau, 1994)

But the people from the communities of Aucapan, Malleo, and
Chiquilihuin in Neuquen, just to mention one the resulting conflicts, have other views and
arguments. They need the land for pastures and subsistence. They prefer other types of
trees they already use to create natural galleries to protect the creeks from drying in
summer, for instance, willows or fruit trees. They also know by experience that a pine
plantation, once a forest fire starts, burns as much as five times faster than the nature
forests, and that the chemicals in pine needles turn soils of the Andean region acidic.
They also have seen new insects (sirex noctilio, urucerus) spreading. The long-term
benefits of commercial plantations, even if done in eroded places, do not cover immediate
basic needs and require a labour force that is scarce and might be useful to cover basic
needs. These priorities, though, are not considered significant by experts and
professionals of the National Institute of Rural Technology (Instituto Nacional de
Tecnología Agropecuaria, INTA) and provincial agencies, who approach the site with maps,
satellite photographs and previously designed action programs and deductive research
methods. "Participation" is then promoted and measured in terms of the degree of
willingness to accept the outside professionals programs. The professionals roles
and practices are shaped by a number of interrelated factors: their own beliefs,
institutional values, and agendas. Only in the least instance, and at the end of all
conditions, if at all, are local views and expressed needs taken into consideration
(Dimitriu & Ciarallo,1995). As described by Banuri, "the interest of the expert
in acquiring, creating, promoting or acting upon the basis of such knowledge is
increasingly motivated by internal considerations, rather than by normative social
implications" (Banuri, 1993:13).

4. Nature and Economic Models

The economic function is but one of many vital functions of
land. It invests mans life with stability; it is the site of his habitation; it is a
condition of his physical safety; it is the landscape and the seasons. We might as well
imagine his being born without hands and feet as carrying on his life without land. And
yet to separate land from man and organize society in such a way as to satisfy the
requirements of a real-estate market was a vital part of the utopian concept of a market
economy" ( ) "To detach man from the soil meant the dissolution of the body
economic into its elements so that each element could fit into that part of the system
where it was more useful The aim was the elimination of all claims on the part of
neighborhood or kinship organizations.

KarlPolanyi, [1944] 1957, pp.178-9

The world can, in effect, get along without natural resources.

Robert M.Solow, Nobel laureate in
economics, (1974) in "The economics of Resources or the resources of Economics",
American Economic Review, May, pp. 1-14, quoted by Babe (1995) and Hall (1994).

The positive connotations of "progress" and
"growth" are still prevalent in the national discourse, in the provincial
administrations, the municipalities, in many social movements, and continually stressed in
the media and educational institutions. Nevertheless, the social, cultural and
environmental consequences of the privileged means of pursuing these goals and their
assumptions are still rarely or only marginally challenged. These impacts, at best, are
considered to be the inevitable costs or "side effects" of any economic activity
even though they involve not only ecosystems but also cultures and different production
systems. Options are reduced to the selection from technology packages and prescriptions,
to contracting of specialized services to reduce costs, to internalizing some of the more
evident externalities, to identifying new market niches, to improving competitiveness, to
currying -by all possible means- public favors such as sponsorships, subsidies and
concessions, and to applying strict adjustment programs. At the same time, the prior
promises of social distribution of wealth in a never realized "trickle-down"
effect, have been revised and updated with new labels, such as the image of
"conscious protagonists in the market" (i.e. stakeholders) or
"those-who-could-survive," meaning farmers who are pushed to abandon the
subsistence production to join the contract farming system. The discourses of growth are
zealously continued in order to retain illusions of opportunities around the corner, which
certainly are not for everyone. The race for adaptation requires competitive and
innovative entrepreneurs and professionals, as well as governments willing to guarantee
the narrowing spaces for economic reproduction.

Statistics of national "growth" (as calculated by the World
Bank and national statistical agencies) and somehow improved in "human
development" indicators (UNDP), even if current production schemes were maintained
(the "zero sum" option promoted by some members of the Club of Rome such as
Manfred Max-Neef) only reveal insignificant proportions of the squandered energies, the
social and cultural destruction, and the environmental devastation, and rarely recognize
any damage within the described societies or done to third parties (other societies, other
generations, other species, etc.). And if recognized, these externalities are used as
arguments for new enterprises (setting eco-standards that only few companies would be able
to follow) and renewed involvement of the state and the World Bank to "restore"
ecological balance. A major problem, however, is how involving what social
processes, knowledge systems and power relations- damages and externalities are either
discovered, perceived, assessed, valued and compensated or, on the other hand, reduced or
simply avoided. The theoretical assumptions of the neo-classical school, it is true, have
been discussed and analyzed in depth and

no part has been left unscathed. The paradigm has been shown to be
extremely unrealistic in its assumptions, especially its notions of a rational,
self-centered individual, and of the existence of a self-regulating market. It has been
shown to be tied to a particular ideology, that of laissez-faire conservatism. And it has
been found to be highly deductive and rather a-empirical; a kind of mathematical form of
scholasticism" (Etzioni, in Lutz, 1988:iii).

However, one of the limitations of the intellectualist approaches to
"scientific" discourse is the assumption that a position can be
"defeated" by another superior "paradigm" using a Kuhnian logical
framework in isolation from the social context, from other meaning producing practices.
But this confrontation extends well beyond the academic world and its rules of
argumentation. As Shiva argues, this "has less to do with knowledge and more to do
with power" (Shiva, 1990:10), and power relations in which "positivism,
verificationism and falsifictionism were all based on the assumption that unlike
traditional, local beliefs of the world, which are socially constructed, modern
scientific knowledge was thought to be determined without social mediation"
(Shiva, 1990:11, emph. added). This last statement has at least two parallel
interpretations: on one hand, the social identification of problems and practical means to
resolve them do involve "logical" procedures. On the other hand, the perception
of objectives, consequences, implications and options are sometimes empirically measurable
(for example if externalities are identified and reduced or avoided instead of being
treated -or traded- as new justifications for investment in technological innovation) and
at the same time dependent on culturally and politically shaped values and expectations
(reciprocity, self-reliance, social justice, respect for future generations, egalitarian
social life, sacredness of Nature). But because of the abstractive nature of economics,
especially in neo-classical theory (9), the ways in which nature and society are
integrated into analysis is problematic and is leading towards exactly the opposite
direction of what have been the promises of "development" : irreversible
ecological and cultural destruction.

The weakest point of the economistic model is its reductionism. The
multiple dimensions of the so-called "externalities" are reduced to the visible
part of the economy and to market transactions (and even there with highly arguable
limitations), a blind spot that has been generously shared by most social-scientific
studies (Beck, 1995:41). However, not everyone has overlooked these "side
effects." Firstly, the far-reaching consequences -or "deep" externalities-
of industrialist economic activity, regardless of the character of its imposition
(colonial practices, military dictatorships, enclosures, or market hegemony) have always
been denounced by its victims but rarely taken into consideration by theorists of growth
in any of its manifestations (neo-liberal, socialist, nationalist, or social-democratic).
In Gemeinschaft economies, in which the market place -not the market system-
permitted a face-to-face interaction between producers and consumers, the scale of
production had fewer consequences and admitted closer interaction among the actors and
therefore direct negotiations, rules and accountability.

The rise of long-distance economy has helped to deny, conceal and
objectify the consequences. The history of capitalism is a story of permanent and
increasing creation and transfer of externalities, a characteristic that has reproduced
"margins" as social or geographical places of a double nature, as dump sites or
as reserves of resources, both in terms of land and labor. It might be reasonable to link
the idea of "externalizing" certain kind of "disadvantages", such as
social conflict (for example pushing "undesired" people into exile or
emigration, one of the most complex externalities both for the "providing" and
for the "receiving" societies) and environmental damage to the notion of
"internal moral" used by Max Weber when he describes the genealogy of religious
or ideological justifications and administrative "rules" produced in order to
apply interest to loans given to third parties, that is, to persons who do not belong to
the same community, class, religion or group. But the transfer of any kind of undesired
consequences, as the contrary to communitarian reciprocity, comprises a multiplicity of
dimensions which exceed the material narrowness assumed in most of the economistic
literature.

Galtung, in one of his earliest contributions to the understanding of
the complexities involved, integrated knowledge (not only "practical" knowledge)
into the elements to be considered. Trade, and moreover "free trade," is more
than a buzz word of unequal exchanges that might be surmounted using differentiated
bargaining skills and technology. It is within this kind of relations that
"comparative advantages" and unjust labor divisions have historically been
extended (if not created) and reproduced. "The basic rule of self-reliance,"
says Galtung, "is this:

produce what you need using your own resources, internalising the
challenges this involves, growing with the challenges, neither giving the most challenging
tasks (positive externalities) to somebody else on whom you become dependent, nor
exporting negative externalities to somebody else to whom you do damage and who may become
dependent on you" (Galtung, 1980).

In a more recent book, Galtung lists six spaces of externalities:
Nature, Human, Social, World, Time and Culture linking them together in a more holistic
and normative method of analysis. In order to avoid single-factor theorizing, "all
six spaces have to be represented; no reductionism to less than six will work"
(Galtung, 1996:155).

Mainstream economics has indeedreacted to externalities but for
different reasons and in a way that may exacerbate the consequences instead of providing
meaningful solutions. The shallow version of externalities can be traced back to from the
beginning of its identification. When Alfred Marshalls disciple A. C. Pigou
introduced the term in 1920, he referred basically to visible "injury," such as
the smoke from a factory, to "buildings and vegetables, expenses for washing clothes
and cleaning rooms, expenses for the provision of extra artificial light, and in many
other ways" (Pigou, in Babe, 1996:90). The ambition and end goal of this approach was
-and stillis- to refine "scientific"methods of
calculations of these kinds of "unpriced" consequences,
initially conceived to impose taxes or subsidies, by means of state intervention, to
"correct" the "inefficiency," a position that was soon abandoned
(state intervention in market processes have never been willingly accepted by the
neo-liberal orthodoxy) in favor of cost/benefit studies. In the words of William Leiss,
"Public and private spokesmen reiterated the comforting message designed to channel
debate: the matter was, like everything else, essentially one of economic cost.
According to this view, environmental quality is one desirable commodity among many, its
marginal utility to be determined by the same calculus that governs the fate of all
commodities in the marketplace" (Leiss, 1974: viii). The "right to pollute"
became soon a new marketable property right in the 60s, especially promoted by the
policy of the Chicago School neoclassicists (Hunt, 1979:369), and has extended to almost
every conceivable domain in the 90s. The process of commodification has now reached
the atmosphere, for instance in "Gas Emissions certificates" that are currently
traded in the context of Global Warming Protocols according to administratively determined
national pollution or oxygen "quotas." The World Bank estimated the trade of
"CO2-bonuses" already offered in the New York stock
market- to be soon a yearly 250 billion market. How does this affect the different
regions? In the case of Patagonia, what used to be a territory managed from Buenos Aires
is now seen as a source to compensate "global" gas emissions, and described as
one of the privileged places, because of the huge forest plantation of 25.000 square
kilometers planned by the German GTZ (Society for Technical Cooperation) that is expected
to absorb as much as 750 millions of tons of carbon dioxide per year (Brecha
Magazine, Montevideo, October 5, 1998). The social space has been implicitly minimized in
this kind of experiment (the local population, at best, might be considered in terms of
labor and centrally planned forest-fire or surveillance brigades), and geography has been
reduced to physical characteristics. The political relations, along with this
transformations, are also moving from a barely accountable nation-state to unaccountable
global structures and priorities of ecological balance, in which the pace of adaptation
from industrial complexes and untouched automobile transportation to marketable standards
is sustained or "complemented" by this kind of "resource management"
projects in the margins.

Ascribing price-value to externalities is an multi-edged
argument since value is a philosophical category that changes over time. If there were no
estimation at all, because of the incommensurability of the burden on Nature of industrial
activity or the non-market labor done by women, just to mention two central aspects of
current debates, then there would be less space for public debate and participation,
leaving consequently more space to speculations about a "neutral" technology
that enable experts to perform "scientific" assessments and induce
"corrective" measures via enhanced innovation or substitutability (e.g.
bio-technology). Some would argue that life and Mother Earth are reducible to
computer-based calculations and assessments, or at least reduced to those
"relevant" aspects that are presumed to be essential for survival or even market
expansion. This, assuming its feasibility, would be a complicated task, but it does
not reflect complexities because it reduces subjectivity and social life to data
inputs and numbers. (10)

The weaknesses of ascribing market value to social processes or
to nature appear when externalities are translated into money, as done by analogy with
Marxs argument of labor as a commodity that is sold in the market. Since money is a
commodity, any analogy would imply a commodification of nature, a theoretical tour de
force that would imply "paying nature a salary" for its
"services," regardless of the yardstick that is used. The subjective historical
character of any pricing system, such as class, gender, race or inter-generational
differences of what is valuable and why, is assumed away. A neo-liberal representative of
the Ecological Economy, for instance, claims to have found a reliable formula of how to
squeeze Natures "services" into the market:

[W]e have estimated the current economic value of 17 ecosystem services
[sic] for 16 biomes, based on published studies and a few original calculations. For the
entire biosphere, the value (most of which is outside the market) is estimated to be in
the range of U$S 16 to 54 trillion per year, with an average of 33 trillion per year.
Because of the nature of the uncertainties, this must be considered a minimum estimate.
The global GNP total is around 18 trillion per year (Constanza, 1997).

One of the limits of a pricing system is the standardization of value
and needs, translating complex processes into the language and exchange rules of a
specific currency, excluding non-market value and time-based (and therefore changing)
perceptions of value.

Neoclassicism and the price system [ ] as a system of information,
knowledge, and communication, utterly efface intimations of uniqueness, sacredness, and
intrinsic value. The uniqueness of species (let alone uniqueness of individual member of
species), and the sacredness of life, are precluded by neoclassicism and the price system
because, by neo-classicisms internal logic and mode of naming, uniqueness and
sacredness are quite unthinkable and unimaginable. Uniqueness and sacredness alike imply
incapacity for, or inappropriateness of, substitutions, which is to say they imply an
absence or inappropriateness of price; but absence of price, by neo-classicisms
logic, means an absence of value (Babe, 1995:99, my emph.)

On the other hand, the idea of risk, failure, and damage has opened the
debate for new forms of accountability, especially since 1972, the year in which the
"industrialist consensus" started to break, but not so much due to the action
and predictions of isolated groups of scientists, the rejection by hippies of the
industrial society or by "early" (western) ecologists who criticized the
consequences of the dominant modes of production. The Meadows report (Club of Romes
"Limits to Growth"), in a context of panic (the so called Oil
"crisis," with its first signals being some "dramatic" limits to speed
in the Deutsche Autobahn), echoed commonplaces and prejudices of "public
opinion" regarding the exhaustion of natural resources due to the increase of the
worlds population and conveyed mostly Neo-Malthusian undertones. However, the report
had a deep impact because it was produced from within the core of the industrialist milieu
and realistically described a number of problems (forests, water, soil erosion, extinction
of species) and enhanced a general view of susceptibility to "natural
disasters." One of the first challenges came from the Bariloche Foundation, in a
document that has been known as the "Modelo Mundial Latinoamericano" (11). The
main thesis of this report was that the available resources on earth (soil, metals,
energy) were infinite or almost impossible to exhaust. It optimistically proposed to
expand the use of nuclear power in Latin America, and declared that the main problem of
the world was the lack of distributional policies and not the mode of industrial
production. In the conception of the authors, there were no ecological problems; the
problem was not growth (growth, on the contrary, was promoted in the report) but justice
within a "developmentalist" ("desarrollismo") approach, a
position that has been described by Mires as "left-rostowianism" and was
parallel to and shared by most of the "dependentistas" in Latin America (Mires,
1990:73).

Section III

________________________________________________________________

1. Notes of Context

For generations, Patagonia symbolized vast territories, unlimited
resources, and the place one could find mythically depicted in Jules Vernes End
of the Worlds Lighthouse. As one of the necessary routes to make the maritime
connection between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans before the construction of the
Panama Canal, the Strait of Magellan and Tierra del Fuego appeared in the accounts,
fantasies, and writings of many travelers, scientists, writers and adventurers (Magellan,
Captain Robert Fitz Roy, Charles Darwin, Alexander von Humboldt, "Butch" Cassidy
and the rest of the gang, Edgar Allan Poe, Orélie-Antoine de Tounens [Patagonias
"emperor"], Antoine de Saint Exupéry, Bruce Chatwin, Luis Piedrabuena, among
others) all of who helped to construct an image of mystery, risk, and a sometimes
aestheticized "wilderness".

The Argentine government used it military to enforce its jurisdiction
over the continental part of this region in 1879,

when Indian resistance had been wiped out and close to nine million hectáreas
of liberated land passed into the hands of the less than four hundred
individuals who had financed [General] Rocas Blitzkrieg-like expedition, [and the]
indigenous culture was left to be forgotten by the general populace and studied by only
the professional anthropologists (Foster, 1990:16).

It was one of these anthropologists, Francisco Moreno (a close friend
of General Roca), who was hired as the official surveyor of the Chilean-Argentine border,
and who donated the territory he received as part of his remuneration, thereby enabling
creation of the Nahuel Huapi National Park in 1903, very much inspired by Yellowstone
National Park in the USA. More sympathetic to the Europeanized urban context than to the
windy southern lakes, and a strong defender of the liberal ideals of the national elite,
Moreno created, instead, the Museum of Natural Sciences in La Plata, a local version of
the Smithsonian Institution, including a monumental architecture and building up from his
private collection, which included 400 indigenous skulls.

The intellectual activity of these years and the dominant direction of
the institutional strategies since then have to be understood as part of a project of
major proportions that affected most of the Latin American countries. "In less than a
generation, Argentina assimilated the constellation of ideologemes known as positivism, a
scientific codification of attitudes that supported the Liberal economic program, aimed to
reject every trace of whatever could be considered pre-modern, indigenous, or
Hispanic" (Foster, 1990:7). The model of the so called Generation of 1880
was predominantly pro-European, favored urban life-styles, reinforced the dependence on
foreign markets and institutions, and relied (as harbor-cities middlemen) on a
staple-based economy in which the first nations were, and still are, viewed as inevitably
(and "naturally") "dying cultures", and the country was circumscribed
in terms of centrally administered wilderness and natural resources of
"unlimited" abundance. The production and representation of spaces,
consequently, defined distances in relation to a national centralism with it models of
(European) civilization as opposed to barbarism (the local "criollo"
population). But centralism is a term with contradictory connotations. The
"country-city" dichotomy of last centurys centralism differentiated the
rural-based cultural "purity" from the urban "polluted", and socially
dissolving environment (the masses). The city, being the "artificial" side, is
the center of power, instrumental rationality and industry. "Wilderness", and
moreover the "indigenous", represents the "natural", creating a social
distance to what has to be "civilized" or conquered (Barbero, 1989:170 and 205).
Centralism, and the metaphor of "empty spaces" also consolidates the definition
of progress "in terms of the triumph of Man (an unequivocally gendered
agent) and his technology over a wild Nature (equally and oppositely gendered,
usually explicitly), which it was its mission to tame and render
productive" (Wallace & Shields, 1997:390).

2. Embeddedness: the local Identity

Changing perceptions of identity and other-than-utilitarian views on
Nature germinated in Patagonia in a combination of local historical contradictions and the
emergence of an international ecological awareness, shaped first by traveler ideals of
"wilderness" and lately by consumer demands for "eco-safe" and
pristine places. On one hand, it stems from the involvement of the migrants to the south.
The first Europeans arrived during and after the military "conquest" of 1871.
The Welsh in 1865, (12) later Germans, Swiss, Italians, Lebanese, among others, received
fiscal land to settle down by the turn of the century, when the Argentine state began to
extend its influence towards the "frontera". This concept of hinterland
was mainly inspired by the north American idea of frontier, and was actually the
determining factor in the design of future cities and the railroad system in Patagonia. To
conduct this project, the Argentine government designated a Californian surveyor and
geographer, Bailey Willis, from 1910 to 1913. With the establishment of schools, police,
postal services, administration of basic health, justice and railroad infrastructure, a
new social basis was created for what could be described as a neo-conservative
communitarianism and which also paved the ground for a wilderness/nature-based identity
(the foundation of several mountain associations, "Clubes Andinos", is a case in
point). Friendly relationships with indigenous communities also were frequent. The
Tehuelches and the Welsh were good friends despite the central governments concerns,
and traded guanacos, the local llamas, and ostriches for their products.
Tehuelche people also instructed Welsh settlers how to capture and ride wild horses and
use the bolas for hunting, helped them as guides in their expeditions and provided
food during shortages. Other migrational waves converged around farmer colonies in
irrigated valleys (planned and carried out in the 1940s) or close to national parks
(World War refugees, internal refugees from dictatorial governments, and alternative and
"New Age" settlers in the early 70s). But also polluting industries,
extensive logging and other extractive activities were subsidized and promoted, the latter
based on the perception that this was a "reserve" with no end.

Within the last three decades, however, this imagery of endless
resources has encountered significant limits. By the end of the 60s, the national
rural development agency revealed the consequences of intensive land use, primarily
extensive cattle breeding in the estancias. Active sand dunes, starting near the
Chilean border in the West, are crossing the continent and reaching the Atlantic Ocean,
burying houses, roads and fertile land, with spiraling effects involved. By 1974, over 700
immense active erosion focuses were located (Castro, 1980). The process has increased its
pace, worsened by mining, deforestation, perimeter of the artificial lakes of huge dams,
and hundreds of thousands of kilometers of trails for oil prospecting. Over 70% of
Patagonia is considered now to be on the verge of becoming an active and windswept desert,
with incommensurable consequences which include solar reflection on the growing sand or
stone surface (and therefore an additional source of global warming). Despite the
knowledge about preventive and restoring techniques, which would in most cases impose
prohibition or dramatic limitations to the rates of exploitation, the course of action
indicates the propensity to maintain the doctrine of non-intervention of the state into
"private" affairs, which means nothing else than intervention through renovated
subsidies, for instance to commercial forestation in the steppe or re-forestation, but
preceded by clear cutting practices. The sought solutions only promote new "fuites
en avant", and more of the same but faster. Diversification, accordingly, means
the adoption of subaltern production schemes such as contract farming, international
merchandising systems, the creation of one Free Trade Zone for each of the provinces,
extending the so-called "agriculture and cattle breeding frontier" in search of
new resources, advancing towards the Andes, pushing for access to the National Parks by
way of privatization and joining new potential partners (or competitors) in international
tourism and real estate activities.

Endnotes

(1) In Nudler & Mallmannn, 1986.

(2) Plunder economy, we are reminded by Martinez Alier, is a translation from the
German "Raubwirtschft", first introduced by Ernst Friedrich last century,
a concept that wasnt very popular during the colonialist era (Martinez Alier,
1990:47).

(3) The concept of gentrification, as for instance described by Raymond Williams in The
City and the Country (1973), transcend the more common application to the revaluation
process of urban properties. For example, Sharon Zukins definition of gentrification
in relation to "the displacement of lower-income, often ethnic and racial minority
residents from newly-desirable centre-city locations" (Zukin, 1990:37) could as well
be applied to similar processes taking place in the countryside or remote areas.

(4) In the last few months, several regional cable, open TV and radio stations have
been purchased by major companies: the (only and) private Channel 7 of the Neuquen
province by CEI, a publishing and electronic media corporation with several links to oil
and banking companies such as the Citicorp, and the public Channel 10 of the Rio Negro
province by Clarin, the most important media and telecommunications giant in Latin America
after Televisa in Mexico and O Globo in Brazil. Both channels cover most of the cities of
the interior and rural areas in provinces in which tourism, mining, oil, natural gas and
timber extraction are the major sources of income.

(5) A concept used to describe similar processes in Canada can be
found in Salter and Salter, in Clement, 1997.

(6) Every economic or social theory starts, implicitly or
explicitly, with some definition  as natural condition, or as a socially mediated or
abstractly constructed- of needs, and provides ideas and norms about how to satisfy them.
Victoria Rader, along with Gustavo Esteva, discusses the concept of needs extensively and
says: "the basic needs approach adopted by authorities in times of social unrest
assumes not only the oppressive political order but the oppressive economic order,
which is the source of powerful dehumanizing forces: the obsession with material standards
of living, the creation of artificial and chronic scarcity, the separation of needs from
their means of satisfaction, and the weakening of family and community supports"
(Rader, V. (1990) "Human Needs and the Modernization of Poverty", in Conflict:
Human Needs Theory" Burton, J. (Ed.) , New York, St. Martin Press.

(7) Adam Smith, in his Moral Sentiments also recognized
"moral concerns" and tried to discern between science and morality, a
distinction that went lost in The Wealth of Nations seven years later (1776), where
he first used the idea of a guiding "invisible hand" that was equated to
"Providence" (for instance in the distribution of land among "a few lordly
masters")in a first reference to a "natural" law in society (Lutz,
1988:35-39).

(8) One of the relevant sources to follow the ongoing "green-red" debate is
undoubtedly the journal Capitalism, Nature, Socialism.

(9) "it is pretty clear that an economist, like a poet, uses
metaphors. They are called models," says Donald McCloskey (in Babe, 1995:9).

(10) One of the "complicated", if not entertaining, side of calculations is
what escapes to our senses and immediate recognition. Complicated
calculations have always attracted some kind of attention and social admiration, as in the
Arab legend about Sissa, the man who is believed to be the creator of chess, in the 5th
century BC. King Hiram offered to reward him with gold, but Sissa asked to be paid in a
1:2 progression of rice grains for each square of the chess board, starting with one grain
(1in the first, 2 in the second, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, and so forth). This would have
been physically impossible to comply (over 87,000 trillion rice grains) without losing
innumerable kingdoms. Smart calculations might have been always used to gain certain
advantages, but this does not imply, conversely, that any calculation is inexorably
destined to be used for domination. In many cultures, as in the ancient Arabic world,
astronomy and numbers were just a social game or philosophical interrogation. After the
industrialist era and the proportions of environmental and social changes, some kind of
abstraction that goes beyond previous direct social experience (we do not have cultural
memory of the ozone hole, for example) is necessary in order to integrate multiple other
dimensions (e.g. spiritual meanings, other non-monetary values) into the debate. That
is complexity, and a good example of it is the multiple social and cultural
dimensions in the struggle to avoid the patenting of seeds and life in general.

(11) Herrera, A et al. (1976) Catastrophe or new society? A
Latin American model Ottawa: IDRC

(12) "On May 27th 1865, the barque
"Mimosa", under charter to the Welsh Emigration Society of Liverpool, left the
Mersey en route for New Bay, an inlet about thirty-five kilometres north of the estuary of
the Chubut [river]. On board were 153 passengers, comprising about 70 Welsh families, who,
in return for the passage money of L12 per adult, were to receive good food on
the voyage, a farmstead of 100 acres per family, plus at least 5 horses, 10
cows, 20 sheep, two or three pecks of wheat, a plough peculiar to the country and a number
of fruit trees and enough supplies to last for four months after their landfall,
i.e. until the first crops from the earth". From "The Role of Symbol and Myth in
the Welsh Settlement of Patagonia", William I. Stevenson, (974), M.A. Thesis, SFU,
page 16.

Salter, L. & Salter, R. (1997) Displacing the Welfare State,
in Understanding Canada. Building on the New Canadian Political Economy, Wallace
Clement (Ed.), Montreal & Buffalo, Mc Gill-Queens University Press.

Shiva, V. (1993) Monocultures of the Mind, London: Zed Books.

Schuurman, F. (1996): Introduction: Development Theory in the
1990s, and Modernity, Post-Modernity and the New Social Movements, in Beyond
the Impasse: New Directions in Development Theory, London & New Jersey: Zed
Books.